Khan sees Salita fight as avenue to become popular in America

By Boxing News - 09/28/2009 - Comments

khan3233529By Jason Kim: WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan’s promoter is reportedly in talk’s number #1 Dmitry Salita’s management about a December 5th fight. Salita, 27, is the mandatory challenger for Khan’s World Boxing Association title. The fight is a necessity for the 22-year-old Khan as he has no option but to take it due to Salita being his mandatory challenger. Khan thinks that the bout will help establish him in the United States because Salita, originally from Odessa, Ukraine, now is an American.

The one problem for Khan getting a name for himself from this fight is that Salita doesn’t have a huge following in the U.S. In fact, Salita is perhaps invisible to mainstream boxing fans, who have never heard of him. Even hardcore boxing fans have seen little of Salita, because his fights are shown regularly in America. If Khan wants to build a name for himself, Salita probably isn’t the type of fighter that he’ll need to become an established fighter.

Even if the cable networks show this fight, it probably won’t do much for Khan because it looks as if it’s going to be a one-sided affair with Khan badly outclassing. This fight figures to be a real slaughter. U.S boxing fans won’t be impressed if Khan goes out and rips Salita apart, even if Salita does have an impressive unbeaten record of 30-0-1, 16 KO’s.

Khan is going to need to be put in with much better opposition than this and his management is going to have to take some risks by allowing him to do that. If Khan and his promoter Frank Warren really want to get some attention in America, they might considering trying to line up a rematch with Breidis Prescott or a fight against either Marcos Maidana or Victor Ortiz.

Any one of those fights would be a great way for Khan to get started in building up a name for himself. He says he wants to be at the level in a year where he can fight great fighters like Juan Manuel Marquez and Floyd Mayweather Jr., but Khan needs to be fighting the intermediary fighters like Ortiz, Prescott and Maidana. The Prescott fight should be Khan’s first priority.

If he can’t beat Prescott, then Khan doesn’t belong in fights against Marquez and Mayweather. Those guys would give him a boxing lesson right now, and he could just run and jab his way to victory like he did against Andriy Kotelnik in July.

That was a fighter that was made to order for Khan. Kotelnik had no power and not much hand speed. Khan needs to prove that he can beat the big sluggers because he can build a name for himself in the U.S. Salita won’t do it and neither will any other obscure fighter without much power.

The real question is whether Khan will even hold onto the WBA title when the time comes for him to fight Maidana, who is the interim WBA champion right now. Khan will have to face him sooner or later. It’s better that Khan face him sooner if he wants to become popular in America.



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